VALSA GEORGE

 

A Sojourn Through Times

 

Mind often makes a circuitous pilgrimage,

Sliding down and going up the banisters of time.

As I hear the grating sound of worn stairs behind,

Memories come darting in and out of shadows.

 

From childhood’s flamboyant days,

Mind scuttles between the past and the present,

Skipping over the bliss of buoyant youth,

To life’s present weary days and to the future.

 

Life’s train has sadly changed its track

Years, like torn pages have flown away.

But the frivolous inner child pines,

Obstinately for all that once held dear.

 

I remember having run over plains n’ paddy fields,

Trying to cut across their widening margins,

Brushing past brambles and thickets,

To chase butterflies that came to molest the lovely blooms.

 

How I went on a search to meet the winged seraphs,

That I heard, sang in chorus in Heaven’s gilded halls.

Looked for God, amid scurrying clouds,

To slay the ghosts, I believed, hidden in my closet.

 

I remember my youth of squandered passions,

When I scrawled love’s graffiti on my mind’s wall,

And carried my beloved’s picture in my mind,

So flawless that no artist could ever conspire to alter.

 

Now I constantly wage a losing battle,

Against forces that threaten to take away my calm.

All I see is pain, death and human suffering,

And life sadly getting lost in meaningless strife.

 

Age has burdened me with a deadly weight,

Fastening chains on my once supple feet.

All I pray is – Don’t let me be a burden to anyone,

And give me a mindset to accept all that comes my way.

 

An Old Woman

 

She leaned on her stick like the Tower of Pisa

Her bones, porous and brittle, might break any day.

She’s all alone, her husband dead and gone

Her only son, years before, shot down by a gun.

Sombre shadows now darken her path.

 

Still there is a rare glow in her eyes

 

When young lovers’ clasp and their fingers twine,

She happily recalls the time she was with him.

She lived a life of love, coloured in enduring tints.

Looking back, she has no cause for remorse.

Her spine’s bent, unable to straighten itself.

 

Still there is a rare glow in her eyes

 

She oft recounts her youth’s glitter and glow,

That takes her back to life’s bygone splendour.

She lived content, her tasks as wife and mother, fulfilled.

Now she is a garment no longer fit to wear.

Will soon be reaped by the scythe of fate.

 

Still there is a rare glow in her eyes!

 

Now that her days are numbered,

Before her, the sole image of a beauteous form

The shining face of God waiting to receive,

This aged pilgrim focuses only on that goal in view.

To the grave she quickly treads, never to return.

 

And there is a rare glow in her eyes!

 

Autumnal Collage

 

Autumn, like an Indian classical dancer, dressed up.

Arrives with soft rhymes and quickening steps.

She comes aglow, aglow with a rare beauty,

Dancing to the bracelet’s tinkling song.

Her floating robe falls in deep folds around her feet,

As she mesmerizes all with moves full of grace.

Viewing the flaming colours in assorted display,

We are apt to wonder if Nature carefully saved up,

All that is best for the closing grand finale.

 

Autumn tints look enchanting all through the land,

With pervading green, offset by crimson, citrus yellow,

Flaming red, lustrous gold and a faded russet.

The air stays crisp and sweet in the ripening fields,

While stray clouds ramble in flawless turquoise sky.

 

When autumn is thus all agog like a frenzied dervish,

It gives us morbid pictures of death and decay.

The trees wrestle to free themselves of their worn cloaks,

Causing a cascade of withering autumn leaves.

Now they fall scattered in endless stream and lie in piles,

Like charred carcasses after a fierce forest fire.

The rustle of dry leaves blown by the wind,

Falls in our ears with the gabble of migrating birds.

 

Pale sunshine sifts through leafless trees of maple and oak-

All those leaves once stayed regal in stations high.

But now tossed out like worthless chaff,

They come nose diving and fall several meters below,

Spreading a hazel curtain over the moist earthen crust.

When trampled mercilessly by careless feet,

They silently mourn their thankless fate.

 

Greying that comes at the end of each autumnal fall

Reminds us of the pall of gloom that awaits us.

It is disturbing like the parting song of birds,

As they fly southward before the fall of winter.

 

VALSA GEORGE

 

VALSA GEORGE is a retired professor from Kerala. After her successful career as a teacher, she took to poetry. She writes on a wide spectrum of topics spanning Nature, Love, Human relations et al. She has authored over 1500 poems in varied poetic forms which she regularly posts in international poetry websites, reputed journals, and literary publications. She has four anthologies in her name - Beats, Drop of a Feather, Rainbow Hues, and Entwining Shadows - the latter two available on Amazon.com. One of her poems ‘A space Odyssey’ has been included in the CBSE syllabus (Rain Tree Course Book by Orient Black Swan) for the 8th grade students in India from the year 2018. Another poem ‘My Fractured Identity’ is prescribed for the undergraduate students (Voyagers) in Philippines